Canary in a Mine Shaft
by KikitheKiwi
Summary: Helen hears a knock on the door while Bob is out, and finds one her old students. He asks her for help, any help. He's desperate, and Helen doesn't know what to do with the shell of a friend breaking down in front of her.
1. Friday

**I don't own the Incredibles, the idea was just stuck in my head.**

* * *

Helen hadn't expected to hear a knock on the door this early in the night. Violet and Jack just gone to bed; Jack Jack had been sleeping for hours. Bob had just left with Lucius, and Helen was about to begin reading her book, War and Piece.

The first time that she'd heard the knock she had thought she was hallucinating. It was soft, almost hesitant. The knocker was not expecting a reply.

Out of pure worthless hope, the knocker had knocked again. Still quiet, but with a bit more purpose. Helen could not ignore it, so she would not ignore it. Slightly agitated at not being able to read, she walked to the front door with haste. As she swung open the door, she found herself almost jumping back in surprise.

_She remembered the first day she had him in class. He walked through the door, and one of the kids in the back threw a ruler at his head. He ducked._

"Ryan? What are you doing here?" Helen had thought she'd never see Ryan after high school, with his (or was it her? (1)) awkward smile and ridiculous love of _books_ and _learning. _

_And one day he'd walked in with his arm in a sling. She'd wanted to ask him what was wrong. She knew he was the subject of bullying, but was it that bad? _

She also hadn't thought she would see him after heroes were banned."Why are you wearing your Macroburst suit?"

_When Everseer had introduced her to his sidekick, she'd been surprised. Ryan had recognized her immediately and smiled. She smiled back. "I want you to meet my sidekick, Macroburst."_

"I need your help, Elastigirl. Please." He was fiddling with this collar and shifting his weight back and forth from one foot to the other.

_He'd become his own superhero within a year, but with the next, the ban on superpower had been placed._

"Ryan! Why are you dressed like that? You know what will happen," She ushered him inside. Pulling out a seat from the table, she motioned for him to sit down. She down with him and continued her questioning, "What's wrong?"

His eye twitched. (She remembered that it was a tell when he was nervous.) He mumbled over his words for a few moments before falling silent.

"Ryan?"

"I'm going to die."

Helen's motherly instincts kicked in, and she grabbed his hand, "Ryan, what do you mean? What happened?"

He seemed to not hear her words, instead shaking slightly. His pupils were dilated, and his eyes were darting back and forth across the room. Panting, he began to try to speak, but it came out as incoherent syllables. She squeezed his hand and he jumped.

"They're going to kill me. It's going to kill me. I need to kill them, but I can't do it. You have to help me please." He had turned to her and grabbed her arm. The crazed look in his eyes was growing, and Helen wasn't sure if he would start crying or screaming. A few more moments of heavy breathing, and then his eyes focused. He let go of her arm and folded his hands in his lap.

Helen tried to look him in the eyes, but couldn't. Her voice was low, "Ryan, what's going on? Who is they?"

He started panicking, "Everseer got a job. A superhero job. I know that we aren't supposed to be superheroes, but he didn't want to sit back and live normal life. I should've stopped him, I know. I'm sorry, I'm really sorry!" He was crying.

She patted him on the back, "It's okay; it's okay."

"No, it's not," he cried, "He said he saw his death. He saw mine too. There was machine, he said. And then he didn't come back."

He was curled in on himself, and she tried to wrap her arms around him in a strange comforting hug, but he flinched away.

"Then they contacted me. They wanted me to destroy it. I did, but they want me back. And I know that this is what killed him and will kill me, but I know that they're going to to kill people. I can't sit around; I need to destroy it, but I can't."

He suddenly turned to face her, "Please. You're the only person I can turn to. Everseer is dead. Psycwave is dead. Plasmabolt is missing. You're the only person left to trust."

She could not respond, so she would not respond.

His head drooped, and he went limp. After a sigh, he stood and walked towards the door. "If you get the urge to help me, I still live at the same address. I leave on thursday."

"Ryan..."

"It's Macroburst!" She almost wanted to stop him from leaving, but the crazed looks in his eyes returned. She knew he would not be reasoned with.

He gently shut the door behind him, leaving Helen to think about what had just happened.

"Mom?" A quiet voice came from the other side of the table, "Who was that?"

"Violet?" Helen sighed, "I should just expect you to be awake by now."

"Yeah, Mom," and that would be Dash, "Who was that?" He came out from under the table.

"The both of you should be asleep. Go to bed this instant before your father comes home." She gestured vaguely up the stairs; she was too drained from her talk with Ryan to cope with loud children.

Dash spoke up, "But mom! Dad's always out for, like, forever. And we really wanna know!" He sat down right next to her, where Ryan had been sitting. He put his elbows on the chair of the seat and rested his face on his hands. Looking at her expectantly, he blinked twice.

"It was an old student of mine, looking for advice."

"Mom, you don't have to lie to us. We saw the super suit," Violet was cautious, as if she thought her mother would begin screaming at them.

Dash continued, " And we heard your talk. Are you gonna help him?"

"No, Dash," Helen said to her son, "I'm not going to help him. We're not supposed to be supers anymore, and he knows that. Whatever possessed him to try and reengage hero work..." She trailed off, "He needs to work this out off his system. Alone."

Violet was concerned, "He said he would die."

"He did," Helen sighed, "Everseer used to predict their deaths every other week. We learned pretty quickly that they were false alarms."

Dash pouted, "Okay. Just once I wish we could go out and kick some bad guy butt."

"Stick to the cartoons," Helen said, "And go to bed!" She picked Dash up and motioned for Violet to follow her. After making sure Dash stayed in his bed, she tucked Violet in and wished them both a good night.

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**Good? Bad? I have a second chapter planned, but I don't know if I should continue.**

**(1) Macroburst's file says that the gender is androgynous, but I didn't want to call him it.**


	2. Saturday

That had been Friday. Today was Saturday.

Helen was out when the phone rang, so when she came back in the evening she saw a message left on the answering machine. She asked Violet and Dash to be quiet for a minute and played the message.

"Hi, Elastigirl. It's Macroburst. I'm sorry for," he paused, "whatever happened last night. I've been getting horrible nightmares and haven't been sleeping well. I'm sorry I flew off the handle. I don't really remember if I was crying or shouting, but I want to apologize."

_The second day he walked into class he was quiet. He seemed sad, but Helen couldn't figure out what to ask, what to say, or what to do._

He laughed nervously, and then spoke again, quieter, "I still want your help. I don't know what I'm going to do." The message ended.

Dash, thinking she was actually talking to someone, asked, "Who is it?"

"No one, Dash," Helen replied. "Have you started your homework?"

Dash puffed in annoyance before walking away. Once he was out of his mother's sight, he ran to Violet's room. He knocked quietly, but very quickly.

"Violet? Violet, can I borrow you book?" He jiggled the doorknob; it was locked. There was no response from in the room, so dash ran off to find scissors. After successfully destroying half a room, he found a pair and ran back to the room. Sticking the scissors in the lock, he twisted them and successfully broke into his sister's room.

"Ahh!" Violet screamed, throwing a pencil at him, "Don't just come into my room!" She had headphones in, which explained why there was no response to his multitude of knocks.

"Did you get the book? Didja? Didja?" Dash bouncing up and down.

Violet rolled her eyes, "Yes, I did. If I give it to you will you get out of my room?"

Dash nodded furiously, and Violet gestured to the book on her bead. Grabbing the book, Dash ran out of Violet's room and to his own, directly across the hall. Smiling, he jumped onto his bed and began flipping through the pages.

"Book of Supers," he read aloud from the cover. Violet had checked out a book from her school library about all the superheroes there were before the ban was placed. It had taken some persuasion on Dash's part to get her to do so, but now he had a valuable source of information.

Immediately he found his parents. It was easy, since he already knew their superhero names and what their costumes looked like. (He made a mental note that his Dad was much more in shape back then.) He found interesting facts about them, i.e. how many crimes they'd stopped and what their powers were.

But they weren't who he was looking for. Dash wanted to find out who was at their house last night. He ("Or was it she?" Dash thought.) said something like Microblast? Dash decided to look in the M category.

Dash found what he was searching for. Macroburst looked exactly like the person who had come to talk to Helen. A former sidekick to Everseer, then known simply as "The Kid," he had the power to control winds. He'd been part of a superhero team, the Phantasmics. (The book listed Macroburst's gender as "unknown," frustrating Dash.)

Dash flipped through various articles regarding crimes he'd stopped as a sidekick, as a superhero, and on a team. Dash laughed at the trivia at the end or Macroburst's section. ("Macroburst was one of the less destructive superheroes, being ranked third on the Least Collateral Damage List")

Then Heidi walked into the room.

"Dash, what are you reading?" she asked, though she seemed excited that her literature loathing child was choosing to read. She was carrying a laundry basket full of clean clothes

"Something for school," Dash said. Heidi's mood changed from proud to slightly disappointed. She put down the basket, said, "Oh. Put away your clothing," and left.

She sat down in their living room and pulled out a copy of _A Separate Peace_. She flipped through the first chapter slowly and tried to appreciate the insight that the narrator had looking bad at his school years, but she found herself skipping ahead to her favorite scenes again, uninterested in what an old man think about what he could have, should have, or would have done if he'd known the consequences of his actions.

It still made her cry. She's not quite sure why. None of the character's deserved the fate's that they received, but she should've stopped caring about that a long time ago. Oh well.

She set down the book, finding herself getting caught up in worries about what Ryan was doing. She was afraid of what he might get himself into with his silly notions of becoming a superhero again. Why couldn't he be content to live normally like everyone else?

(Though, she supposed, too many kids dream of flying. It's hard to give that up.)

Was there actually something wrong? Someone couldn't just kill a superhero out of hiding and not have the police stirring about. Surely something else must have happened to Everseer. He was always hanging around crazy people. Maybe he finally...

Helen snapped out of her train of thought. She didn't want to think about dead friends from the past. She didn't want to think of a friend from the past who showed up at her door, hysterical and clearly out of his mind. She just wanted to appreciate her damn book!

Jack Jack started crying, successfully distracting her from her inner rant. She went to check on him, only to find him drifting back to sleep in his crib. She smiled and thought fondly of the child in front of her who always fell asleep easily. It's like he fixed himself most of the time. Either that, or he has a guardian angel.

Or Helen has one. She had really hated waking up at 2 AM to try and find an invisible baby.


End file.
